The Trump administration offered justifications for why it carried out a lethal strike against the drug boat instead of just interdicting it and arresting those on board.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said previous U.S. interdiction efforts in Latin America failed to stop the flow of drugs.
“What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them,” Rubio said on a visit to Mexico.
Earlier in the day, Trump said he was sending a message to the cartels.
“On the boat there were massive amounts of drugs,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office. “We have tapes of them speaking. There was massive amounts of drugs coming into our country to kill a lot of people, and everybody fully understands it. But you see it, you see the bags of drugs all over the boat, and they were hit. Obviously they won’t be doing it again. And I think a lot of other people won’t be doing it again. When they watch that tape, they’re going to say, ‘Let’s not do this.'”